The Money You Make

Suppose we pay pediatricians $5 million for every appendicitis they pick up and send to a surgeon.

Suppose we pay surgeons $10 million for taking the appendix out.

What do you think of that? Does this seem reasonable?

Can’t we justify this because a life has been saved?

I’m willing to bet that you are saying no. Indeed, it would be righteous for you to protest this pay scheme.

We don’t pay pediatricians this amount of money. We consider it price gouging.

Furthermore, if we paid pediatricians this kind of money, why then anyone could justify an outrageous salary. After all, we don’t pay policemen outrageous amounts of money. We don’t pay firemen outrageousamounts of money. They save lives as well.

Teachers do an important job. They save lives by guiding small children down the right pathway. Why don’t we pay them $5 million per annum?

We don’t because society throughout time has agreed to put reasonable limits on what people can make.

We control things, especially for essential services.

Why do these rules not apply to Palo Alto? Especially since their “job” has come to be seen as essential.

For the past thirty-five years we have permitted “geniuses” from Palo Alto to become multi-billionaires.

Why? What outrageous value do they add to society that justifies this wealth?

The only reason they are wealthy is because we as a society have permitted it. Or because the powers-that-be have been paid off to look the other way.

Enabling politicians to look the other way is one of the problems we get when we allow a particular group of people to make too much money. People with too much money can’t seem to resist the temptation to game the system in order to make more. Soon enough, the making of money becomes a sickness.

We saw this with the Fords and Rockefellers who set up all kinds of think tanks and lobbying efforts in order to feather their own nest.

We see it today in Palo Alto and those businesses that are integrated into internet technology.

In short, they have become financial cancer cells. Like a malignancy they have woven their way into our government and daily lives.

They convince school districts to pay for expensive tablets that children use for games; they influence Congress to oppose net neutrality that threatens smaller voices; they violate the Constitution by arbitrarily shutting down the free speech of voices that disagree with them.

They have too much money for their own good and for ours as well.

We need to get that money back.

Just as the victims of Bernie Madoff got their money back, we need to get our money back. We have been grossly overcharged for the computer services we have paid for in the past thirty-five years.

The basics of computer information technology was developed by professors working for academia which we the people paid for. The materials that went into the computer are by no means close to the amount of money that we paid.

What these people charged was egregious.

We’ve been ripped off, and we continue to be ripped off.

Their money needs to be confiscated.

The amount of money they can charge for future services needs to be controlled just like we do for everyone else.